The invention most closely corresponds with USPTO Class 414/1/5 wherein Class 414 relates to material or article handling and subclass 1 relates to article manipulator which moves analogous with human hand, finger or arm movement. Subclass 5 relates to means to transmit feedback signal from manipulator means to hand, finger or arm.
In its simplest form, the invention relates to a novel ball launcher that is interactive with respect to wirelessly reading data regarding the launch and retaining the data in either a Smartphone, on-board circuitry or a removable dongle that can be then read by a computer. The ball launcher is comprised of an elongate flexible handle with a grip at one end and a scoop at the opposing end, wherein the scoop contains opposing portions which generally create a ball-shaped recess to frictionally hold the ball. When a User swings the handle with sufficient force, the friction fit releases such that the ball will then “launch” out of the scoop.
As we know regarding Smartphones, digital technology is used to convert data, such as short messages, e-mail or digital pictures, into small packets. Packets are transmitted securely over wireless systems as a series of 0's and 1's. Thus a Smartphone can act as a receiver of data when interacting with the transmitter resident in the ball launcher. The on-board module processes much like a Smartphone in that it gathers data, can store it, and ultimately send that data to a source such as an app or computer program.
A dongle is a piece of hardware that attaches to a computer via a USB connection, and allows a piece of secured software to run. The device does not contain the software in its entirety, but rather is an electronic key that unlocks the program on a computer. With the inventive ball launcher, a dongle resides in the tip of the handle and can also record data related to the activity of the launcher.